Why you don’t want to get too personal with an escort

My name is Sarah and I have spent the better part of a decade working as an escort in a large metropolitan area in Canada. My experiences have been both interesting and sometimes off-putting. I’d like to help all you fellas out there and offer a bit of advice on what not to do. Let me walk you through the exciting and sometimes strange world of escorting.

It was early on in my career when I met Stef. He was a fresh faced college kid who was desperately trying to grow as much of a beard as he could manage. He spoke with a thick French Canadian accent and sometimes threw a french word in here or there. We had seen each other a few times and all had been going well. Then one day he started to get more and more insistent on asking very personal questions about me.

It started off innocent enough. Where do you work? Do you go to school? Have you ever gone to University or College? I was new to the business and as an independent escort I didn’t exactly have anyone there to walk me through the do’s and don’ts of small talk with clients. I opened up to him a bit more than I should have about my schooling and hobbies. One day he flat out told me that I should get out of escorting and focus on my real career. That I should finish school and concentrate on my grades instead of entertaining men. I was flabbergasted. I had no idea what to say to him and I stood there, mouth slightly agape, searching for words to say. I ended up mumbling something along the lines of “Thanks for the advice, I’ll think about it.”

He took this as an opening to continue telling me about how I should get out of the business, that I was too good to be an escort. Too pretty, too smart, too funny, too full of personality and life. You’d think that these statements he was making would come across as flattering but they did not. They were not compliments, no. I took them as insults. I was too smart to be an escort? Excuse me but do you know how much escorts earn? If I had wanted to put myself through school the old fashioned way I would still be up to my ears in student loan debt. I was unequivocally insulted. I don’t even know how I got through the appointment but I did and he left, still spouting the same platitudes he had been spouting at the beginning of the appointment. I received a text from him shortly after he left asking me if I’d like to go to dinner with him sometime.

I was still new to the business and felt that I needed every client that I could get so despite having been taken completely aback by his comments, I agreed. I asked him how long he’d like to book me for and his reply was that he didn’t want to book me at all, he wanted to see me off the books, as a date. It took me a long while to figure out how to respond to him and hours passed before I had figured out what to say. I can’t remember the exact wording of my reply but I made it clear that I was available to him as an escort and not on a personal level. While my reply was well thought out and worded carefully his reply was not.

He started by telling me that I was better than this, that I didn’t need to do this to make my way in the world. Why would I want to let a sleazy, overweight guy pound away on top of me just for a few bucks? He then started to tell me that given the information he had about me from our chats that he was confident that he could find out who I am. That freaked me out so much that I instantly blocked him and took a short break from escorting.

It wasn’t just me who had a client who tried to convince them to give up their job. I worked at an escort agency for awhile, many years after the situation with Stef, and one of our girls was East Indian. We would receive calls now and again from gentleman with thick Indian accents and the phone girl would have to tread carefully. Some Indian men would show up and their only purpose was to talk her out of working as an escort. They tried to screen her calls because of this and in fact there was one gentleman who was particularly persistent in his harassment. He would call from a pay phone and try to book a date with her.

However our phone girl knew his voice after a very short while and would tell him that she was fully booked. No matter how many times he was not allowed to visit with her, he kept trying. He never tried to book with another escort, it was always the East Indian escort that he was seeking. I sat down with her one day and we had a long heart to heart. She told me the about all the harassment that she’s received due to being from that culture and working as an escort. These men would show up and try desperately to convince her that what she was doing was wrong, that she can save herself if she gets out now. She said that one of the main reasons she signed on to work with an escort agency was because she was seeking some protection from this harassment.

You may not think that something like this counts as harassment but I can assure you that to the girls, it absolutely does. Imagine someone coming in to your place of work and trying to convince you that what you’re doing is wrong and sick. We’re not ignorant to the fact that many people don’t agree with what we’re doing, that’s fine. None of us exactly broadcast it to the world that we are escorts however we have a certain amount of pride in what we do.

The money is good and if you aren’t a complete idiot about it you can bank a lot of money. My above mentioned coworker had a four year old daughter and had recently bought a small little house on the outskirts of the town she was from, all thanks to escorting. Escorting was putting a roof over her daughters head and food on the table. She wasn’t exactly happy to be doing what she was doing but she wasn’t ashamed of it either. Another thing that sticks out to me is that she wasn’t able to escort in her own town, she had to travel three hours away and work in our town. She worked four days on and then went home for the rest of the week to be with her daughter. She was unable to continue working in her town because one such customer had went to great lengths to track her down after prying some personal information from her during their appointments.

He managed to find her brother on social media and sent him pictures and details of her secret life. Thankfully her brother was understanding and didn’t share this information with anyone else from her family but the experience freaked her out enough that she decided she couldn’t risk it. In this case a bad client not only caused stress and upset but made her change the way she did business. She was a single mother, trying her best to raise her daughter and bring her out of the poverty in which she had been born. As far as I know the harassment by gentlemen from her culture never stopped and it was something she had to learn to live with.

There might be a long stretch between incidents or they might happen within weeks of each other. It was just another part of her job, to deflect the pushy weirdos who thought that they had any right to dictate what she should or shouldn’t be doing with her body.

A lot of clients try to become friends with you, and this isn’t necessarily a problem. They like you and they want to know more about you. For the most part there’s no problem with this but sometimes it can lead down a road you don’t want to be on. Be careful with what you ask your escort. While it’s normal that you want to find out more about her you have to be careful that you don’t pry too much and freak her out. You may wonder why an escort is so hesitant to tell you personal things about herself.

What would it hurt to tell you what school she went to, what she took in University, where she’s worked before, etc. There’s a lot of identifying information that can be learned from admitting any of these things. In fact one of my friends that I met while working at an agency told me about a particularly creepy guy she had dealt with. He had booked her a few times a month for a long stretch of time and she began to open up to him more than she normally would, thinking he was not only a regular but seemed trustworthy and down to earth. Little did she know that he was going behind her back and trying to sleuth out who she was.

He became obsessed with knowing her real name, with knowing who she was and what her real life was like. One day an old coworker from her previous job called her up. He sounded nervous and after making some small talk, he finally came out with it. A gentleman had showed up at her old work asking if anyone knew her. He didn’t give a name (he knew the name he had for her wasn’t her real name) but described her and asked if she sounded familiar. Her coworker told him that he had no idea who he was talking about and continued to feign ignorance despite the guys persistence. He made some excuse about how they have a high turn over and there’s a lot of girls that fit her description but the John wouldn’t give up.

Eventually the coworker had to get the manager involved to force the John to leave. The coworker debated whether he should tell her about it at all but thankfully he did. She immediately alerted the escort agency to not book her with that gentleman anymore. She explained why and thankfully the agency was a good one and had no problem with her request. The whole thing shook her up a little. She confided in me that she was worried that maybe he had figured out who she was and spent many weeks worried that he was going to contact her family or friends. This never ended up happening but the experience left its mark on her and me as well.

It’s a case of a few bad apples ruining it for everyone else. While most clients are absolutely fantastic and pose no threat at all, there are the few assholes who ruin it for everyone else. You might be wondering how you’re supposed to know if you’re being too personal and it’s relatively simple. Don’t ask your escort anything that might identify her. Asking her where she likes to go to hang out, what bars and restaurants she frequents, what program she’s taking at what University.

These are all questions that may seem lighthearted and innocent to someone who has no bad intentions but to an escort they can be seen as warning signs. We have no idea if you are just curious or if you might be using this information to find out who we are. You might not think that this kind of thing happens a lot but it does happen and it’s such a jarring experience that none of us want to go through it. Escorts do get stalkers and it’s something we have to always be aware of. Just how much information we share with our clients is up to us. If your escort seems uncomfortable and avoids answering specific questions, let it go.

She’s not here to tell you her life story, she’s here to make you feel good. No one’s telling you not to make small talk, having a bond with your escort is important but it’s also important to respect that she doesn’t necessarily want to share potentially identifying information with her clients. Not all escorts have had bad experiences with men who have taken things a bit too far but most of us have heard of other escorts who have had such experiences with customers. Be mindful of the fact that this is not an inherently safe job.

Escorts can experience abuse, both physical and verbal, and the danger doesn’t end there. All of us are aware that this job has the potential to be very dangerous and can even be life threatening. Refusing to give out personal information about ourselves is not us trying to be jerks. We’re just trying to be safe.

In closing, be aware that this kind of thing happens and act accordingly. Asking questions that are too personal can also serve to alienate your escort. Why? Because when you’re asking what our first dog was named or what games you liked to play as a kid, it takes us out of our sex kitten persona. Now we’re thinking about our little terrier named Patch and playing Marco Polo in the pool as a kid. None of these are particularly sexy topics of discussion and will throw off her game.

If you’re determined to ask these kinds of things, that’s fine, I’m not telling you that they’re the worst things you can say, I’m just telling you that if your escort seems thrown off by these questions, that’s why. She wants to be a sex bomb for you and thinking about her innocent childhood is probably not the best way to do that.

Sarah is a retired escort. She spent nearly ten years working in the industry and now enjoys a management role in a busy agency. She enjoys writing about her experiences in her free time.